Today we hear from one of our site directors from Elkhart, IN - Caleb Stanton. Enjoy!

Caleb and his family - they’ve been in Elkhart for nine years, where Caleb is the program director for Lifeline Youth Ministries.

Growing up in a Christian family and community it is easy to have a preconceived idea of what the word “Mission” means. All too often in the church today the term mission is reserved for those doing full time mission work outside the United States. Even knowing that Jesus calls us all to live a life on “Mission” is not enough for most Christians. It is easy to have the idea that you need to be crawling through a dense jungle with your Bible looking for an unreached tribe in South America. However truly experiencing that mission and being surrounded by those living with a missional mindset is what causes your mindset to change.

This is exactly what happened to me my senior year of college when I did a yearlong missional internship with my church.

“…we are all on mission, we are all sent…”

Over the course of that year I learned that we are all on mission, we are all sent to those people in the daily places and spaces that we inhabit. But even better than learning this was experiencing it with a group of other believers.

That internship experience helped to change my paradigm of missions and shape a more Biblical view that impacted the whole trajectory of my life. I graduated college with a degree in criminal justice and instead of pursuing police work like I previously planned to do; God placed a desire in my heart for social justice.

Through this process God brought me to Lifeline in Elkhart, Indiana where we work with at risk youth.

Lifeline has been embedded in the community for over 55 years. Lifeline strives to share the love of God through building long term relationships with the youth in the community. Most of the kids we deal with are lucky if they have one parent who is functioning well enough to invest positively in their child’s life. So by coming alongside the kids and parents alike we work to link arms with them as Jesus would.

It is this missional mindset that has led to such a beautiful and seamless partnership with QuadW Missional Internship!